Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c12.1.1

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The function that the Indian melodies, as rāgas, have been made to play, namely, of spelling out in the language of symphonic formulas definitive rasas, capable of evoking a variety of human emotions has yet to be investigated with reference to the nature of the psychology of musical expression. So much mystery has hovered round the phenomenon of musical expression itself, that until recently no clear conception of the nature of musical utterance has been possible. Great lovers of music have helped to intensify rather than elucidate the mystery. Definitions of music such as that of Cardinal Newman, as "the out-pouring of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound", or of Carlyle, who called "music a kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech leading us to the edge of the infinite", or that of Lafcadio Hearn—who characterized music as "a psychical storm, agitating to unimaginable depths the mystery of the past within us", can only be regarded as emotional effusions, rather than as scientific enunciations of the nature of musical expression. Even the attempts of expert musicians have not been helpful in unravelling the mystery of the riddle. The technical experts, long persisted in the psychological fallacy, that music had nothing to do with the ordinary emotions of life, but were concerned with emotions peculiar to music itself—i.e. purely musical emotions. According to this view, supported by psychologists like Dr. W. Brown¹ and M.